Wednesday afternoon, before the big snowstorm hit, a drunk driver somehow managed to get a car onto the tightly-bounded plaza at Harrisburg city hall with enough speed to flatten one of the three flagpoles there.

The driver fled across the street to the Hilton Hotel, where he was captured, according to James Roxbury of Roxbury News.

Mayor Eric Papenfuse told PennLive he was meeting with his staff that afternoon, in a room with windows, when he saw workers in the Bravo building next door, trying to get their attention by holding up hand-lettered signs about the commotion below.

So now the city that has trouble fixing things that go wrong now has one more task on the fix-it list.

How fast might the flagpole be repaired and how will the cash-strapped city pay for it?

If the driver has insurance, Papenfuse said, that would cover the repairs. But that's unlikely — in which case, the mayor said with a laugh, the money might have to come from the fund he is creating to raise money for fixing up city hall.